[618] The Gulf of Salonica.
[619] Read 13,500 stadia.
[620] It was an error alike shared in by Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Strabo, that Alexandria and Rhodes were under the same meridian, notwithstanding the former of these cities is 2° 22′ 45″ east of the latter.
[621] This is an error peculiar to Eratosthenes. The meridians of Carthage and the Strait of Messina differ by 5° 45´.
[622] The Strait of Messina.
[623] Spain and France.
[624] The Getæ occupied the east of Moldavia and Bessarabia, between the Danube and the Dniester. The Bastarnæ inhabited the north of Moldavia and a part of the Ukraine.
[625] The Greek has simply, κατὰ τὴν ἠπειρῶτιν, in the continent, but Strabo, by this expression, only meant to designate those parts of the continent best known and nearest to the Greeks. The other countries, in regard to which he pleads for some indulgence to be shown to Eratosthenes, are equally in the same continent. Kramer and other editors suspect an error in the text here.
[626] According to Plutarch, both Thales and Pythagoras had divided the earth into five zones. Since Parmenides lived one hundred and fifty years after the first of these philosophers, he cannot be considered the author of this division. As Posidonius and Strabo estimated the breadth of the torrid zone at 8800 stadia, and Parmenides is said to have nearly doubled it, this would give 17,600 stadia, or 25° 8′ 34″, taking this at 25° it would appear that Parmenides extended the torrid zone one degree beyond the tropics.
[627] The Arctic Circles of the ancients were not the same as ours, but varied for every latitude. Aristotle limited the temperate zone to those countries which had the constellation of the crown in their Arctic Circle, the brilliant star of that constellation in his time had a northern declination of about 36° 30´, consequently he did not reckon that the temperate zone reached farther north or south than 53° and a half. We shall see that Strabo adopted much the same opinion, fixing the northern bounds of the habitable earth at 54° 25′ 42″. Gosselin.